"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy
you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied to," one woman told
the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class
Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare.

And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered
by a U.S. president.

The most famous presidential lies have to do with misconduct (Richard
Nixon's "I am not a crook" or Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual
relations") or war. Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the slogan "He kept us
out of war" and then plunged us into a calamitous war. Franklin D.
Roosevelt made a similar vow: "I have said this before, but I shall say it
again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign
wars."

Roosevelt knew he was making false promises. He explained to an aide: "If
someone attacks us, it isn't a foreign war, is it?" When his own son
questioned his honesty, FDR replied: "If I don't say I hate war, then
people are going to think I don't hate war. ... If I don't say I won't
send our sons to fight on foreign battlefields, then people will think I
want to send them. ... So you play the game the way it has been played
over the years, and you play to win."

The burning question about Barack Obama is whether he was simply "playing
to win" and therefore lying on purpose, or whether his statements about
Obamacare were just another example of, as Obama once put it, "I actually
believe my own" spin, though he used another word.

"No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the
American people," he told the American Medical Association in 2009. "If
you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you
like your health-care plan, you'll be able to keep your health-care plan,
period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

No matter how you slice it, that was a lie. As many as 16 million
Americans on the individual health-insurance market may lose their
insurance policies. Just in the last month, hundreds of thousands have
been notified by their insurers that their policies will be canceled. In
fact, it appears that more Americans may have lost coverage than gotten it
since Healthcare.gov went "live" (a term one must use advisedly). And when
the business mandate finally kicks in, tens of millions more probably will
lose their plans.

Ah, but they'll get better ones!

That appears to be the new rationalization for Obama's bait-and-switch.
"Right now all that insurance companies are saying is, 'We don't meet the
requirements under Obamacare, but we're going to offer you a better
deal!'" explained Juan Williams on "Fox News Sunday."

A better deal according to whom? Say I like my current car. The government
says under some new policy I will be able to keep it and maybe even lower
my car payments. But once the policy is imposed, I'm told my car now isn't
street-legal. Worse, I will have to buy a much more expensive car or be
fined by the IRS. But, hey, it'll be a much better car! Why, even though
you live in Death Valley, your new car will have great snow tires and
heated seats.

This is what the government is saying to millions of Americans who don't
want or need certain coverage, including, for instance, older women -- and
men -- who are being forced to pay for maternity care. Such overcharging
is necessary to pay for the poor and the sick signing up for Obamacare or
for the newly expanded Medicaid.

At least Darth Vader was honest about his bait-and-switch: "I am altering
the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." Obama won't even admit he
lied.

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama talked at great length
about the middle class and not once about the poor. His critics on the
right said he was lying, that he was really more interested in income
distribution. Such charges were dismissed as paranoid and even racist. But
the critics were right. Obama was either lying to himself or to the rest
of us -- because he was playing the game to win.